Lower East Side

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lower East Side in Manhattan (marked in blue)

The Lower East Side ( LES ) is the part of Manhattan in New York City that lies at the southeast end of the island on the East River .

location

The exact delimitation of the district is made today with Houston Street in the north, Bowery in the west and East River in the south and east. Until the 1960s, today's East Village was part of the Lower East Side as the northern part . Cultural workers and real estate agents forced the separation of names in order to be able to differentiate themselves from the slums in the southern area of ​​the Lower East Side .

history

Since the 17th century

Tenement Building (apartment building), Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York

In 1621 the Dutch West India Company acquired the trading rights for the area from what is now New Jersey to New England . As a result, 30 Walloon families settled on the southern tip of present-day Manhattan ( Lower Manhattan ) in 1624 and named their fortified settlement Nieuw Amsterdam . The fur trade with the native indigenous population represented their economic basis .

In 1626, the Wesel merchant Peter Minuit , as is believed, acquired the entire island of what is now Manhattan for around 60 guilders, thereby becoming the island's first governor . With the Dutch West India Company came new settlers, but also African slaves who were used in the now rapidly developing agriculture.

In 1656, as the new governor of the settlement , Petrus Stuyvesant had a first map made of Nieuw Amsterdam and sent it to his homeland, the Netherlands . The map showed 120 houses with around 1,000 residents. After political power struggles, the English finally took control of Nieuw Amsterdam and renamed it New York City on February 2, 1664 , named after the English nobleman, the Duke of York .

More emigrants came from all parts of Europe to try their luck in the economically flourishing and rapidly growing settlement. As early as 1672, 2,500 people could be counted, by 1700 it was around 5,000 and by 1800 over 60,000. The Lower East Side quickly became the gateway for immigrants, not just to New York City, but to the rest of the entire United States .

Immigration waves in the 19th century

In 1820 the great wave of Irish immigration began, culminating in the Irish famine (potato famine ) from 1845 to 1849. When the great wave of German immigration began in 1855, New York City already had more than half a million inhabitants. In 1870 more than 170,000 German-speaking immigrants lived in the Lower East Side. They formed a quarter in the northern part of the Lower East Side, which was also known as Kleindeutschland . At the same time, Little Italy began to develop west of it and Chinatown southwest around the turn of the century . European Jews from Eastern Europe came in larger numbers from 1880 onwards. By 1915, Jewish immigrants made up nearly 60% of the Lower East Side's population . The life, culture and problems of immigrated Eastern European Jews in the Lower East Side have been vividly described in numerous works by Isaac Bashevis Singer .

Since the 1950s

Brooklyn Bridge with the Alfred E. Smith Houses in the background

From the early 1940s to the late 1950s, large parts of the Lower East Side, especially the neighborhoods along the East River, underwent extensive renovations . These measures came at a time when social housing in New York City was expanding considerably. In the densely built-up areas of the city, such as B. the Lower East Side, this happened almost entirely at the expense of the existing buildings from the 19th century . The largest new housing developments include the Alfred E. Smith Houses in the south of the Lower East Side next to the Brooklyn Bridge and the Baruch Houses .

As the gateway to immigration to the United States , the Lower East Side has been a reservoir of cultures for centuries. The melting pot has given this district of Manhattan an unmistakable character due to the diversity of languages ​​and the different religions.

With the liberalization of immigration laws in the 1960s, immigrants came from Latin America , Central America and various Asian countries.

In the late 1990s, Chinatown expanded across parts of the Lower East Side, and an emigration of the Jewish population became noticeable. The Poles, Italians and Ukrainians who dominated the streets have given way to newer immigrants from Japan, Bangladesh and other Muslim countries.

Since the 1960s, there has been an increasing appreciation ( gentrification ) of the East Village by hippies , musicians and bon vivants who settled here and had a lot of media coverage. In recent years, the trend in the East Village has expanded to include the not yet redeveloped parts of the Lower East Side. This has rejuvenated the district and taken its sub-bourgeois appearance or made it a backdrop. Many shops and institutions that have existed for several generations can no longer be found. The usual Sunday closing of Orchard Street is hardly necessary anymore because the street vendors have almost disappeared in favor of new and more expensive boutiques. The area has become a nightlife district with many concert venues.

In culture

The following films are playing in the Lower East Side:

the Lower East Side is mentioned in the following musical works:

  • The song Ballad of the Lower East Side (2013), published by rock musician Michael Monroe , addresses the social transformation of the Lower East Side since the 1980s.

See also

literature

  • Rebecca Lepkoff: Life on the Lower East Side. Photography by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1937–1950, text by Peter Dans & Suzanne Wasserman, New York 2006, ISBN 1-56898-606-8
  • Hasia R. Diner: Lower East Side Memories, A Jewish Place in America. Princeton University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-691-00747-0
  • Raymond Bial: Tenement, Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side. The Horn Book Magazine , Nov 2002, ISBN 0-618-13849-8

Web links

Commons : Lower East Side  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nieuw Amsterdam . (JPG 182 kB) NYC & Company, Inc , archived from the original on September 28, 2007 ; accessed on January 12, 2016 (English, original website with Peter Stuyvesant's map of Nieuw Amsterdam no longer available).
  2. ↑ Geoff Barton : Video premiere: Michael Monroe - Ballad Of The Lower East Side . Team Rock Limited , April 19, 2013, archived from the original on February 22, 2014 ; accessed on January 12, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).

Coordinates: 40 ° 43 ′  N , 73 ° 59 ′  W